FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT DEFAMATION - PAGE 5

Two Bucks County police officers, ordered by a jury to pay $300,000 for defaming a district justice, want a new trial on grounds that testimony damaging to the district justice was kept out of court. Falls Township Police Chief James Kettler and Lt. David Clark are arguing that the jury did not get an accurate picture of District Justice Joseph Basile. They say Common Pleas Court Judge George T. Kelton stopped them from pursuing questions about how Basile ran his office and private life.

Two members of the Lower Gwynedd Zoning Hearing Board yesterday told a Montgomery County court jury that they had no recollection of township Supervisor Janet Kirch saying to them that Frank W. Comfort Jr. "has dealings in heavy drugs. " "I couldn't repeat a word she said," Frank Vitetta, chairman of the Zoning Hearing Board, testified during the fourth day of the defamation trial of Kirch on a lawsuit filed by Comfort. "I think I would have remembered hearing Comfort's name if mentioned that night," said the other Zoning Hearing Board member, Cary Levinson.

Mike McQueary, the former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach turned star witness in the case against Jerry Sandusky, sued the college Tuesday, claiming defamation and unfair termination. In filings in Centre County Court, the 38-year-old alleged he was maligned for his cooperation in the state's case against the Nittany Lions' former defensive coordinator, who was convicted in June on 45 counts of child sex abuse. He is seeking $4 million. McQueary is also expected to play a key role in the forthcoming trials of two former Penn State administrators charged with failing to report Sandusky's crimes and later lying about it to a grand jury.

The president and CEO of the Philly Pops has filed a defamation suit against the conductor and pianist Peter Nero, the Pops' former artistic director. Frank Giordano, who took control of the Pops and negotiated Nero's exit from the orchestra he had helped to found, filed a complaint late Wednesday in federal court accusing Nero of making "knowingly false and defamatory statements" in a June 13 article in the Allentown Morning Call. In the interview, in advance of his concert at the State Theatre in Easton, Pa., Nero said of his departure that "crooks dressed in $3,000 suits came in who didn't know a thing about the music business.

WHEN controversial radio host Tarsha "Jonesy" Jones "likes" a business that advertises with Power 99, her listeners trust her "because Miss Jones doesn't hold her tongue," the station says. There's a flip-side to that, one local businesswoman found, and she says that it resulted in her getting death threats, broken windows and a tarnished reputation. In a defamation suit filed in Common Pleas Court yesterday, Tracey Parson said that families pulled their children out of the four Kiddie Kare day-care centers she owns in the city, almost immediately after callers to the "Jonesy in the Morning" show misidentifed her as a mother who had beaten up teenage girls.

A former Newtown Township official has sued three men and their Warminster business for defamation, saying they sent an anonymous letter to several municipalities and the state attorney general accusing him of unlawful behavior. M. Matthew Lahaza, the former township code enforcement officer and Planning Commission member, filed the civil lawsuit Monday in Bucks County Court against Code Inspections Inc. and its shareholders, Gerald J. and Daniel K. Azeff and James R. Cochran. The letter, dated March 30, 1989, accuses Lahaza of "a clear pattern of unlawful behavior, surreptitious double-dealing and ethically questionable behavior.

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy has denied that it defamed and violated the civil rights of a veteran African American math teacher who was fired in the fall for allegedly sending inappropriate text messages to a female student. In documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court, the private school disputed Arthur "Chuck" Matthews' allegations that he was unjustly terminated in September and that the action was part of a pattern of discriminatory practices the "predominately Caucasian" school had engaged in for years.

Former Alabama football coach Mike Price sued Time Inc. for $20 million yesterday, contending he was defamed by a Sports Illustrated article about the strip club visit that led to his firing. The suit seeks $10 million in compensation, the value of the seven-year deal Price had with Alabama, which fired him after his night of alleged drunken carousing in Pensacola, Fla., in April. The suit, filed in state court, seeks another $10 million in punitive damages from Time, which publishes Sports Illustrated.

A Common Pleas Court jury is expected to begin deliberations today on whether a vitriolic leaflet campaign against City Councilman Jack Kelly and "the homosexual agenda" in 2007 was defamatory. Testimony wrapped up yesterday in the civil trial of 80-year-old Paul D. Corbett, sued by Kelly over his guerrilla-style campaign attacks that each side says nearly cost the Republican councilman his at-large seat in the 2007 general election. Corbett spread fliers in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 6 election to force Kelly to change his May 2007 vote to end a dollar-a-year lease agreement between the city and the Boy Scouts' Cradle of Liberty Council that dates back to 1928.

S WILMINGTON - A tenured professor fighting to keep his job at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington has sued the dean for allegedly making defamatory statements in an effort to fire the instructor. Lawrence J. Connell, an associate professor at the school, has accused dean Linda L. Ammons of intentionally making false statements that characterize Connell as a racist and sexist in administrative proceedings to oust the professor. Attorneys for Connell said the suit was filed Friday in Delaware Superior Court.